Horn of Africa facing the worst drought in 50 years. The office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) issued an urgent appeal for $136.3 million to assist new arrivals from Somalia in Ethiopia, Djibouti and Kenya.
“In Dollo Ado I saw with my own eyes the enormous suffering of the Somali people trying to reach safety and food. Refugee children are dying and their mothers, reduced to walking skeletons, face the unbearable choice of which child to save first,” said UNHCR chief, Antonio Guterres, who visited the area in southeast Ethiopia bordering Somalia Thursday.
The refugee agency said the Somali refugees are arriving in an appalling state of health, dehydrated and severely malnourished, especially children. Malnutrition rates among newly arriving refugee children under the age of 5 range from 40 to 50 percent, according to the UNHCR. The massive influx is creating enormous challenges and has stretched the capacity of the Kenyan and Ethiopian authorities and of UNHCR to screen, register and shelter them.
The UN children’s agency, UNICEF, asked for $31.9 million in extra funds to provide lifesaving support for the next three months to millions of women and children affected by the drought.
Marixie Mercado, a UNICEF spokeswoman, told reporters around half a million children were already in a life-threatening condition, an increase of 50 percent over 2009. Severe malnutrition rates were extremely high in the Turkana district of Kenya, where more than 37 percent of children were severely malnourished, she said. In an Ethiopian camp and in Kenya’s Turkana district, mortality rates were above the emergency threshold of four deaths per 10,000 children per day, she added.
Emilia Casella of the World Food Program said 2.85 million among Somalia’s population were in need of humanitarian assistance, up to 3.5 million were in need of emergency assistance in Ethiopia and a similar number of people were expected to be affected in Kenya by August. The dramatic situation was compounded by huge spikes in food and fuel prices, she said, adding that in the case of Ethiopia, food prices had increased by more than 32 percent compared to last year.
